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The H Roundup - Linux 3.7, Samba 4 and more WhatsApp

Welcome to The H Roundup, your rapid review of the week with the most read news on The H, the security alerts and open source releases, and the essential feature articles – all in one quick-to-scan news item.

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Mobile messaging service WhatsApp once again had to fix security problems with its application, but back at the desktop it also appears that Windows 8 applications are inherently unprotected against tampering, allowing users to gain all kinds of perks without having to pay for them. Meanwhile, on Android, researchers discovered that very little malware actually gets caught by the safeguards built into Android 4.2.

After grappling with some bugs for longer than anticipated, Linus Torvalds released the latest version of the Linux kernel. He will also have to permanently retire the machine he first started to write Linux on (assuming he hasn't done so already, of course) as support for the i386 architecture in the Linux kernel is to permanently go away. Samba 4 was released, including support for Microsoft's Active Directory, and a first beta of LibreOffice 4.0 has also hit.

Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon apologised for calling free software luminary Richard Stallman "childish", Google and Facebook united to fight software patents, and a cunning botnet hides the communications with its C&C servers among the different layers of The Onion Router.